Veterans' Housing Complex Shows Way Forward

DEBBIE BURKART AND ANDREA PEREIRA | OP-EDThe Hartford Courant

Stories that surround homelessness are often difficult to hear, especially when they come from men and women who have served in our military. Despite our best intentions and clear national goals, meeting the needs of our most vulnerable veterans remains a slow, difficult and sometimes failing process.

The news is both sobering and encouraging. Despite the difficult economy of recent years, homelessness is on the decline among veterans. Data released last month points to a 24 percent drop in the number of homeless veterans from 2010 to 2012, a change brought about in large part by significant public-private efforts to build affordable housing that provides social services focused on veterans' needs. Today, there are still approximately 58,000 veterans living on the streets, but that's down from more than double that just five years ago.

In Connecticut, there are thousands of local veterans who struggle to earn enough to keep their homes; several hundred more slept on the street last night. Those men and women are much more likely to be chronically homeless than those who have found help. Many have significant problems related to poor health, mental illness, substance abuse and lasting dislocation from their former lives. Meeting their needs presents a stiff challenge, and we need to accelerate our efforts.

Specifically, we need more places like Victory Gardens, a new residential development built on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical campus in Newington. This month, the $28.6 million development celebrated the grand opening of 74 affordable apartments with on-site social services auch as employment counseling, all designed for low-income individuals and families — particularly homeless veterans.

Victory Gardens isn't just an apartment complex. Here, men and women who lived and fought in Inchon, Khe Sanh and Fallujah can leave behind the shelters and emergency rooms they've relied on and come home to Newington. The housing is adjacent to existing VA medical facilities, which gives veterans who live there easy access to quality health care and other services. The staff at Victory Gardens helps them coordinate the on-site and external services they need.

Victory Gardens isn't owned or operated by the VA or any other branch of government. It was built by a regional nonprofit — Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development, working from Middletown — with a complex mix of private capital, philanthropic contributions and public programs.

It's a development that flourished, even as others around the country stalled. In part, that's thanks to a strong lineup of partners who understand this work. But it also hinges on a federal program that frees up VA property for the construction of affordable veterans housing. Victory Gardens was completed under the enhanced-use lease program. It's a policy that solves one of the biggest problems facing supportive housing developers: acquiring land.

Reasonable financing was also a key. Supportive housing developments like this one have a particularly difficult time carrying high debt because their low rents don't generate sufficient cash flow to support it. Recognizing that, Victory Gardens tapped federal low-income housing tax credits to attract $17.1 million in equity capital from Morgan Stanley, working through the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit community development organization, and its affiliate, the National Equity Fund. The development further benefited from rent subsidies from the state, which helps it keep apartments affordable without compromising the ability to provide the services residents need.

Victory Gardens is a model that can be duplicated, if important federal programs that underpin it can be preserved. Over the last decade, LISC and NEF helped create nearly 2,000 units of affordable supportive housing for veterans, and it's clear to us that there is no lack of will to move swiftly on new developments. But programs like the housing credit are at serious risk in Washington, as are other important funding streams, such as Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers — a joint program between HUD and the VA that helps fund services for veterans at an increasing number of new housing developments. They must be maintained if we are to continue to make progress.

Debbie Burkart is national vice president for supportive housing at National Equity Fund, leading veterans housing work. Andrea Pereira is executive director of the Connecticut branch of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. in Hartford.